The observations made by Pavel Olexík in 1848 are accepted as the beginning of standardised meteorological measurements in Brno. Three times every day, from September 1861 to December 1867, Professor Alexander Zawadzki, a teacher of physics and botany at a Brno technical secondary school, kept recording the values of air pressure, air temperature, precipitation, wind and atmospheric phenomena. His observation diary also includes phenological data and information about meteorological and other natural events across the Czech Lands and Europe. Because there is neither a great distance nor difference in altitude between the places in which Zawadzki and Olexík made their observations, the pressure and temperature readings show only negligible divergences. The differences are not significant for wind direction, precipitation totals and days with rain and snow, but they are greater for atmospheric phenomena. The contemporary meteorological activities of Gregor Johann Mendel also vastly contributed to Brno becoming an important centre of meteorology in the eastern part of the Czech Lands in the 1860s.

The relevant data and information is necessary for the correct decision making. It applies also in case of health system management. Nowadays, many international databases of health data are available. The first part of this paper describes databases of the most important health data providers. Databases of WHO, WHO/Europe, OECD, IARC and Eurostat are searched and compared. However, combining statistics from various databases can be dangerous because the data are mutually incomparable. This is caused by different standard population, varying definitions of similar attributes, etc. used for comparison, which complicate international data comparison. Available indicators also do not allow adequate assessment of the quality of national health systems. The last part is dedicated to projects that compare international health statistics, the quality indicators and health care expenditures in order to achieve sufficient capacity and productivity of national health systems.